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Cartografías De Implicación E Imaginación Geográfica En La Creación De Pars Quinta. La Tierra Austral De Guillaume Le Testu (S.XVI)

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Cartografías De Implicación E Imaginación Geográfica En La Creación De Pars Quinta. La Tierra Austral De Guillaume Le Testu (S.XVI) Cartografías de implicación e imaginación geográfica en la creación de Pars Quinta. La Tierra Austral de Guillaume Le Testu (s.XVI) Carolina Martínez CONICET – Universidad Nacional de San Martín / Fondation Maison des Sciences de l’Homme Resumen: En el transcurso del siglo XVI, las expectativas políticas y económicas en torno al descubrimiento de una supuestamente existente Tierra Austral condujeron a la producción de objetos cartográficos específicos. Mapas, planos y atlas insinuaron la Cuadernos de existencia de una Quinta Pars, recreando la apariencia y localización de esta tierra incógnita en distintos soportes visuales. El análisis minucioso de los doce mapas in-folio Historia Cultural que Guillaume Le Testu dedicó a Terra Australis en su Cosmographie Universelle de 1556 revela que fue la imaginación geográfica comprendida en la creación de Pars Quinta la que la convirtió en una fuerza impulsora de la expansión ultramarina en la temprana modernidad. Revista de Estudios de Historia de la Cultura, Palabras clave: Imaginación geográfica, Tierra Austral, Quinta Pars, Guillaume Le Testu, cosmografía. Mentalidades, Económica y Social Cartographies of Implication and Geographical Imagination in the Making of Pars Quinta. Guillaume Le Testu’s Terra Australis (S. XVI). Abstract: Throughout the 16th century, the political and economic expectations built Nº 9, ISSN 0719-1030, around the discovery of a supposedly existent Southern Land gave way to the production of specific cartographic objects. Maps, charts and atlases hinted at the Viña del Mar, 2020 existence of a Quinta Pars, recreating the appearance and location of this elusive land in diverse visual media. An in-depth analysis of the twelve in-folio maps Guillaume Le Testu dedicated to Terra Australis in his 1556 Cosmographie Universelle reveals it was the geographical imagination involved in the making of Pars Quinta that turned it into a driving force of overseas expansion in the Early Modern Age. Keywords: Geographical Imagination, Southern Land, Quinta Pars, Guillaume Le Testu, Cosmography. * Contacto: [email protected] Recibido: 04/11/2020 Aceptado: 06/12/2020 33 Cartografías de implicación e imaginación geográfica en la creación de Pars Quinta. La Tierra Austral de Guillaume Le Testu (S. XVI) Carolina Martínez CONICET – Universidad Nacional de San Martín Fondation Maison des Sciences de l’Homme 1. Terra Australis en el mundo ampliado de la expansión ultramarina. Imágenes literarias y cartográficas de la quinta parte del mundo Un fenómeno propio de la expansión ultramarina europea iniciada en la península ibérica a fines de siglo XV fue la convivencia en un mismo mapa o carta de espacios conocidos junto con cartografías de lo desconocido. Esto se debió, en principio, a que por su propia definición todo mapa permite plasmar tanto espacios transitados cuanto desconocidos o imaginados en un mismo plano o superficie. En términos de Christian Jacob, el mapa es el producto de un proceso de construcción y creación, “que más que representar el mundo intenta esquematizarlo y visualizarlo”1. En este proceso, el mapa como objeto cultural crea espacios “ficticios de visibilidad” pues, sea su objetivo la reproducción mimética de un espacio existente o la proyección de una tierra imaginaria, las imágenes cartográficas se materializan en un conjunto de líneas y puntos sobre un plano cuya función es hacer visible lo que de otra forma sería imposible 1 Jacob, Christian, L’empire des cartes, Albin Michel, París, 1992, p.360. Si bien hace ya varias décadas se ha propuesto un cambio en la forma de comprender la producción de objetos cartográficos, el llamado a abandonar formas más tradicionales de comprender e interpretar su producción sigue todavía en pie. En el estudio introductorio de Opérations cartographiques, obra de reciente publicación bajo la dirección de Jean Marc-Besse y Gilles A. Tiberghien, los autores instan a alejarse “de la transparencia aparente del objeto cartográfico y restituirle su espesor, sus complejidades, sus tensiones internas, sus dispersiones, sus fluctuaciones, sus diversidades, sus historias. Detrás de esos objetos aparentemente estables que son los mapas, debe tomarse en cuenta el conjunto de gestos que los atraviesan.” En: Besse, Jean-Marc y Tiberghien, Gilles A. (dirs.), Opérations cartographiques, Actes Sud/ENSP, París, 2017, p.14. Cuadernos de Historia Cultural, nº 9, ISSN 0719-1030, Viña del Mar, 2020 34 observar2. En la modernidad temprana en particular, la coexistencia de terra cognita con terra nondum cognita (o directamente incognita, aunque teóricamente existente) devino un rasgo sobresaliente pues, en la medida en que se produjeron nuevas exploraciones, tanto los cosmógrafos cuanto los navegantes debieron asumir que la imagen del orbe terrestre, tal como representada en los mapas, era, en principio, incompleta3. En función de lo antedicho, es posible afirmar que toda imagen cartográfica es necesariamente verosímil, pues implica el entendimiento tácito (entre quien la produce y quien la observa) de que las zonas dispuestas en un plano bidimensional traducen en imágenes un territorio dado. A la vez, también llamamos cartografía verosímil a la imaginación o puesta en imágenes de tierras desconocidas a partir del entrecruzamiento de diferentes fuentes de conocimiento, tales como la experiencia de los viajeros al Nuevo Mundo, los supuestos teóricos heredados del saber clásico y los relatos de viaje o imágenes originados en otros espacios y contextos de producción4. Se defina lo verosímil en sentido amplio, como en el primer caso, o en sentido estricto, como en el segundo, ambos postulados refrendan el supuesto de que “los mapas no son calcos de la realidad territorial” sino “acciones, o, más precisamente, operaciones orientadas hacia los territorios o a partir de ellos”5. En esta línea, las reflexiones del filósofo español Carlos Thiebaut en torno al vínculo entre mapas, tiempo y figuras constituyen un aporte igualmente importante para reflexionar en torno a la creación de imágenes cartográficas sobre territorios desconocidos. Para Thiebaut, sin importar su naturaleza, todo mapa “ubica unas cosas en relaciones con otras y nos ubica a nosotros en esas relaciones”. En otras palabras, a las relaciones cognitivas y espaciales que un mapa despliega también deben sumarse las relaciones de implicación que prefigura6. “Lo cercano 2 Jacob, Op. cit., p.136. En la opinión de Jacob, resulta más apropiado referirse a la materialización y construcción de una imagen específica del espacio que hablar de representación de la Tierra. Por su parte, Carla Lois sugiere “salirse del cuadro de la representación entendida en su sentido positivista más clásico, o sea, representación entendida como una reducción de lo real, y retomar la idea de representación en tanto que expresión.” Véase: Lois, Carla, “Quinta Pars o Terrae incognitae?”, Terra Brasilis (Nova Série) [En línea], núm. 4, 2015, párr. 5. Publicado el 12 febrero 2015, consultado el 05 marzo 2018. Disponible en: http://journals.openedition.org/terrabrasilis/1084 3 La noción de tierra incógnita y sus múltiples significaciones han sido exploradas en profundidad por Carla Lois en su reciente libro: Lois, Carla, Terrae Incognitae: modos de pensar y mapear geografías desconocidas, Eudeba, Buenos Aires, 2018. Véase también: Carla, “Cartografías de un Mundo Nuevo”, Terra Brasilis [Online], núm. 6, 2004. Publicado el 05 de noviembre de 2012, consultado el 21 junio de 2017. Disponible en: http://terrabrasilis.revues.org/363 4 Lois, Op. cit., 2015. 5 Besse y Tiberghien, Op. cit., p.14. 6 Thiebaut, Carlos, “La identidad extrañada. Mapas, tiempos, figuras”, Boletín de estética, año 1, núm. 1, Buenos Aires, 2004, pp.11-12: “Pero lo cercano y lo lejano no son solo relaciones cognitivas porque sean espaciales (y espaciales Cuadernos de Historia Cultural, nº 9, ISSN 0719-1030, Viña del Mar, 2020 35 y lo lejano”, tanto como la importancia asignada a una región frente a otra, no serían entonces la expresión de una relación espacial (al menos no únicamente) sino un efecto del vínculo o ligazón con el objeto cartografiado. Tanto la propuesta de Thiebaut cuanto las reflexiones en torno al mapa hasta aquí delineadas constituyen un punto de partida para reflexionar acerca de la construcción de Terra Australis como Pars Quinta en la modernidad temprana. En primer lugar, aquellas “relaciones de implicación” esbozadas por Thiebaut incitan a reevaluar las motivaciones detrás de las percepciones e imágenes que se produjeron de Terra Australis entre los siglos XVI y XVII. Al respecto, es factible pensar que la Tierra Austral incógnita fue una entidad geográfica con significaciones diversas para las potencias marítimas europeas. A su vez, la incidencia de la imaginación geográfica en la producción de una imagen verosímil de Terra Australis continúa siendo un campo de estudio fecundo para indagar en torno a la epistemología del saber temprano moderno. A partir de estas coordenadas, el presente artículo tiene por objetivo evaluar el peso de una serie de variables culturales y geopolíticas en la conformación de la Tierra Austral incógnita como quinta parte del mundo7. Se postula que, en un período en que las imágenes del espacio terrestre se modificaron profundamente como consecuencia de la experiencia transoceánica europea, la supuesta existencia de una Tierra Austral tal como había sido conjeturada por el saber clásico atravesó un proceso de resignificación que, según el centro de producción cartográfico, otorgó más o menos importancia
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